Podunk Gravy

For starters, there were those superficial, blow-dried news journalists reading their canned lines off of teleprompters as they went to satellite footage of the world overheating, and changing the channel you had all those oaken-faced celebrities compulsively confessing their sorry sins on Oprah as she nodded on with rapt attention with a handy box of tissues before a crowd of baggy-eyed fat women dabbing their eyes like hogs. Then you had the transparency of "New Age" snake-oil salesmen peddling "a higher consciousness" that never materialized to the credulity of chicken-hearted women into UFO's along with their soft-spoken male consorts with ponytails and bobbing Adam's apples like Ichabod Crane, and puffed-up Al Sharpton-led advocacy groups looking for "special treatment" instead of "equal treatment" to the deep regard of the spineless as they strutted their stuff like sly Nazis. And to top it off, there was a honey-drippin' seducer for a President running for smooth re-election to the satisfaction of crabbing "soccer moms" crossing their arms and bitching with the family dog buckled up in the passenger seat of the minivan.

Correct me, the cockroaches HAVE TAKEN OVER with screeching insectoid triumph.

What remained was the core of emptiness felt by a budding angry white man-ape whose country was escaping his grasp-- tapping into a certain stripe of resentment which could be described as something gray, stringy, and crusty. In short, it was the kind of tobacco-chewing mistrust that didn't much cotton to tulip-tossing strangers trying to convince you to let down your guard in a world of humping queers, wily con artists, and the insistent beautifying of Martha Stewart making everything "so dear" with a feather duster and lace curtains. Martha would offer you a plate of gingerbread men, the frosting arranged on their tiny faces to give them "a happy smile", and you'd knock over the platter with a snarl.

The attitude to behold was the one of Monsanto Chemicals Inc. that hosted our co-ed scouting troop-- a vinegary, libertarian ownership that swept the ship clean and suggested some kind of vestiege of national greatness. God help you, a veneer of bleached 1950's moral values, the stars n' stripes waving overhead as you stated your business through an intercom at the gate and a little white scooter patrolled the grounds with industrial-espionage paranoia, slowing down to a crawl and looking in our joshing-around direction like Ross Perot squinting at Ninjas. Hearkening back to the golden age: the man in the gray-flannel suit carrying a brief case to hokey motivation music, the RAND corporation explaining itself before the military with the snap of Donald Rumsfeld flag-saluting attention, scientists in white coats working with test tubes in labs, the modern slide-rule technocracy that brought you Agent Orange.

Obviously this would leave a 15 year-old man-ape who thought about things with some misgivings. Lingering questions about faith and doubt and throwing everything away in a quagmire for nothing. Paralysis. Fear. Oblivion. Death. Your dick shot off in a rice paddy.

Throughout it all-- thunder in your heart-- resonated the constant homage given to "That Greatest Generation" which stormed the beachheads at Normandy and Imo Jima, their women waiting for them at home, brave and true (-- as told by Tom Brokav in slick media spreads in TIME). But for all the mythologizing, that generation seems awfully peevish these days. . . . . stooped over with an IV staff down a nursing home corridor as he irritably calls for his crotch-affirming sponge bath, or slapping down prescriptions from a medicine cabinet with impatience as he toothlessly sucks after Geritol, and finally packed into a coffin with moth balls as his grandchildren look down and wonder "why grampy's scowling?" at the funeral home. Thrown into a pit and buried, half-forgotten, by the living as the proposition of gay marriage loomed over the land, threatening to defile everything with militant depravity-- rainbow-haired clowns holding up an upside-down American flag outside the Supreme Court and chanting like Hamas.

To make things more grotesque in the eyes of the young, aged and withered vaginas would moisten over a perfumed box of old courtship letters from "The War", when things were simpler that way. Yes, as they clutch their hearts over "grampy", God bless his muttering, alcoholic soul in a hotdog vendor's hat and how in life he griped on and on about "the Japs". Maybe it all "added up" back then, but it sure doesn't pay now as two silly old gray-haired sisters delight themselves by mailing a shriveled hotdog back and forth for fifty years.

Part of me could only shiver in revulsion. How could a generation be so hokey? How could these women fall for it? And moreover, how could this current generation of young girl-apes not fall for a half-Jewish wise-ass like me? My fine, perceptive mind that could root out the more leering contradictions of everyday life?

I was the only boy-ape from my scouting troop who signed on, and my Dad as a wizened old Lutheran silverback gorilla winked that I should have "a wonderful old time". It seemed that I had the ole' banana tree all to myself. Just climb up there, pick the prettiest, and mash it up between your lips like the sweetest delicacy "Mother Jungle" had to offer. Simple and lip-smackin' good. But little did he know who ALSO signed on for this week of cut-rate summer camp: van loads full of delinquent Job Corps kids, teenaged wranglers in tight blue jeans, and the slat-eyed inmates of a boy's home who carried on like a "bad boy" River Phoenix off his behavior modification drugs-- lookin' around with malingering expressions like pole-cats.

Yes, the vans spitting gravel as they rolled up, coming to a crooked standstill, and the occupants getting out. . . . . eyeing those teenage girl-apes in leggy jean-shorts as does a group of horny seafarers eye that Thai pussy at port peeking out through fans. Easy smiles and lots of "howdy's", as I watched them limber up, stretch, and whirl their arms around in circles. Yes, a fine young assortment of bunk-sitting jailbirds. Poised and self-assured like thieves pilfering their way around the fly-buzzing stalls of a flea market, they outnumbered my middle-class Woody Allen misgivings 50 to 1. The tragedy of it all, dawning on me like a mushroom cloud of resentment, was that there weren't enough girl-apes to go around.

The cosmic joke was not lost upon me in the dining hall, when the girl-apes were nudging each other and turning their wide-eyed feminine gullibility to "Cody". This 17 year-old cowboy didn't sit at the dining hall table like anyone else, but SQUATTED there, lean and rangy, eating his beans and dabbing his bread in the gravy like a romantic figure from the Old West. How little he needed, raw-boned and sparse of words. Just see him roping those "lil' doggies" with his lasso. In coming days he would rock out on the porch swing with an arm around one of them, making her shiver down to her quivering, suburban-bred loins of how insensitive he was to pain (-- like a rawhide whip left out to the elements), how he had a masochistic streak, and how he liked to take matches and burn himself. The girl-ape would cling to him all the tighter as he carried on like a cross between Forrest Gump and the sorrier roles of Billy Bob Thornton, making him put away the lighter he brought out and ratcheted a couple of times to great effect. It was something that had all the stirrings of a "white trash" dime-novel from the turn-of-the-century as she vowed to "nurse this poor animal back to health". As they'd snuggle up and French-kiss leperously I'd sprout horns and have a vision of giving ole' Cody "a hot-foot". Watching him hop up & down and blowing out his toes, this little exchange would take place:

-- "Hey 'love-birds'. . . . . looks like 'Dr. Feelgood' paid you a call!"
--"You asshole!"
-- "I need a bandage!"
-- "You'll both thank me for this someday. . . . .Well, maybe NOT YOU, Cody. Now take your sorry ass and limp out of here!"
-- "Oh lordy, dang, that smarts!"
-- "Don't 'tread on the corns' of those who observe like Mark Twain!"

Then there was "Rocky", who might as well had rocks in his head, his lot in life was so piss-poor standing there ungiftedly in his bib overalls and turning his head from side-to-side and reckoning things. With thick plastic glasses, corn-cob teeth that stuck out at an unfortunate angle, and a crew-cut exposing his pink, ham-like head to the merciless elements, this 24 year-old looked like he had been spat out the wrong end of World War II. . . . . and was just a birthday shy from being "shoo'ed" out of Job Corps and into just what manner of elevated employment, I could scarcely imagine. Shoveling coal out on the railroad yard, probably. Or working in a factory, the sparks raining down onto his scalp and leaving him with spots even pinker on that ham-like head, like someone had been flaking off the top layer of the main course at Easter supper.

He seemed to be the sort who'd ruminate about African cannibals, shaking his head at the backwardness of "the niggers".

In some kind of warped, World War II universe Rocky would probably find himself fleeing on foot through the jungle in a fat man's safari's suit and overtaken by a tribe of seven foot tall Bantus, carried back to the village on shoulder poles like an antelope, stewed up in a giant pot, and served up with a yam stuffed in his mouth.

Yet Rocky was certainly no one's idea of anything "scrumptious". And that's why Besa loved him.

She was a quiet girl-ape, adventurous, strong-willed, and was getting the first taste of "good girl" rebellion against her placid father, no matter how ludicrous its expression manifested itself. The father didn't know what to say about his 16 year-old daughter's choice in man-apes, and figured it would be best to keep his easygoing distance and let this "fad" run its course, preferably within the next 96 hours. But Rocky wasn't swift enough to catch "the drift" as they walked around the property together hand-in-hand like the shittiest "Romeo & Juliet" that ever was. She took it all in bemused stride at his pathetic earnestness, as he sketched out the future they would have together. How they would go to the county fair, eat off the same stick of cotton candy like mules smooching over an apple, and how he'd win her a bear at the ring toss. Only in Rocky's world, the best he could come up with was a deformed teddy bear, headless, with an arm sticking out of its butt. He'd hold it up by one leg, open-mouthed, because that's all he had.

I had a vision of Rocky working with a traveling carnival, standing on top of a flat-bed truck in shit-stained overalls and shoveling down those deformed bears for all the barefoot, tow-headed, underprivileged children named "Caleb" to win at the "games of chance" (-- victory no guarantee). Wasn't life generous as the carnival organ played a fruity tune?!

Besa in a candy-striper suit would work the concession stand and drop a hotdog with a blurt. She picks it up and sells it anyway "because that's all they had". Sleeping out in a tiny pup tent with Rocky's feet sticking out like Fred Flinstone, and a shivering stray dog coming by to piss on the side with a flaming sound. Rocky coming out, cursing, and wringing that dog's neck with a yelp. Now you know where that hotdog meat comes from.

(A headless dog swinging gently in a smoke house)
-- -- "No, you didn't just see that!"

Strangely enough, a girl-ape felt sorry for me and decided to play the part of naughty matchmaker. Or she pretended to feel sorry for me, because she led me by the arm like a real "gal-pal" over to a frizzy-haired dweeb in red glasses who seemed happy enough for the male company, but on closer inspection turned out to be a "Trekie" Christian Fundamentalist who believed the way to show a man-ape "a good time" was to dance "the hokey-pokey" in Vulcan ears.

I wasn't about to dress up like a burly Klingon and pretended that I had diarrhea, excusing myself from the blinking one-woman festivities. As I walked back to camp, I saw a girl too fat to get on a horse though the adults were pushing with all their might, a wrangler holding the bridle steady as she strained like Elvis in his death throes.

I had gotten so many snootfuls of "Podunk Gravy" in recent days, that I ran into the bathroom to wretch on my hands & knees, gripping the porcelain like a man about to fall off the world.

Give me a bus ticket. . . . . back to the wholesome world of middle-American kitsch.

I will be taking an extended sabbatical.

*******************

"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(Rheeee of Crickets)

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("I heard that, Missy!")